A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

Beautiful things, when taste is formed, are obviously and unaccountably beautiful.

Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

A great man need not be virtuous, nor his opinions right, but he must have a firm mind, a distinctive luminous character.

Truth is one of the realities covered in the eclectic religion of our fathers by the idea of God. Awe very properly hangs about it, since it is the immovable standard and silent witness of all our memories and assertions; and the past and the future, which in our anxious life are so differently interesting and so differently dark, are one seamless garment for the truth, shining like the sun.

One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.